LG Replicating Nike's FuelBand With Its Smart Activity Tracker

 

LG pulled the clone trick on us at CES 2013 with its shamelessly familiar Smart Activity Tracker. Like the FueldBand and Up, LG's Smart Activity Tracker is a feature-rich fitness tracker in the from of a matte rubber wristband designed a lot like Nike's widely popular FuelBand. But unlike the FuelBand's stealthy muted rubber looks, the Smart Activity Tracker clearly has a visible LED glossy display that's touch-sensitive to swipes with the ability to pair with your smartphone via Bluetooth 4.0 to display information and alerts from incoming calls and text messages - including music playback controls right on its little touchscreen display. It'll also display things like the time and whatever LG devices to call the motivating point scoring system.

It'll use its built-in sensors and GPS to accurately track your daily activities like the FuelBand and the Up wristbands; while also being able to sync with both Android and iOS devices using the companion app. By the looks of it, LG is completely dominating the smart watch and fitness tracking gadgets with the Smart Activity Tracker. The company is also planning to add a heart-rate monitoring feature. LG is keeping quiet on the pricing, but it plans to release its Smart Activity Tracker in the summer. We can already tell that the Smart Activity Tracker's glossy screen will prove difficult for users to read in broad daylight as opposed to the FueldBand's rubberised dot-matrix LED display.

Fitbit Flex Joins The Wristband Fitness Trackers

We never thought we'd see a wristband fitness tracker from the folks at Fitbit, but it seems that Fitbit was easily tempted by the success of Jawbone's Up and Nike's FuelBand wristband trackers. And that is why Fitbit just announced its first wristband offering called the Flex. It's a slim and rather stylish piece of smooth monolithic sculpted rubber you can comfortably wear all day and all night for the sake of knowing how well you've performed physically.

Hardware wise, the Flex is actually a small dongle much like Fitbit's One tracker that can be removed from its rubber wristband home and put into a different colored one including slate, teal, tangerine and black. The Flex wireless syncs with your iPhone, or Samsung's Galaxy S3 and Note 2 devices over Bluetooth 4.0 as it updates the companion Fitbit app with the data it has tracked like steps taken, calories burned, distance traveled, quality and duration of your sleep. Like the One, the Flex is water-resistant, has a 5-7 day rechargeable battery life and features a set of LED dotted lights replaced the One's small and informative OLED screen to represent your activity level against your goal and nothing more. The Flex also features a silent alarm that can be set to vibrate on your wrist.

The Fitbit Flex can be pre-ordered starting today for $100 in either black or slate, and it's expected to ship in the spring. It'll include two wristband sizes in the box as standard.

Fitbug's Orb Fitness Monitor Targets Fitbit, Jawbone, Nike

Activity trackers are it this year. Like many of its kind, a company called Fitbug is competing with Fitbit's One, Jawbone's Up and Nike's FuelBand with its new Orb activity tracker. Fitbug's Orb is a much cheaper $50 gadget that basically does everything the aforementioned trackers do, albeit it offers more flexibility with its modular design and support for iOS and Android smartphones. The Orb is a tiny little button device that can be slipped into various types of Fitbug accessory depending on where you'd like to wear it, like a rubber wristband, belt clip, lanyard and even a magnetic bra mount. It uses a motion sensors to keep track of your daily activity like tracking how many steps you've taken, distances traveled, how many calories you've burned. And it even doubles as a sleep monitor tracking your sleeping patterns and how well you've slept at night.

Fitbug's Orb features Bluetooth 4.0 in order to wirelessly connect with your iOS or Android smartphone and transfer data in real-time. Much like Fitbit's Zip, the Orb uses a button cell battery to draw its power. Only thing missing is an on-board display. Instead you'll have to rely on the Orb's app to see your data or tell time. Fitbug plans to release its wireless fitness monitor in the spring.